PAM = 4 
MSS, Yinance + Slewardash Ls 


Ohiristian Missions 
and the 


Highest USe ot 
Wealth 


President 
Merrill Edwards Gates, LL.D. 
Of Amherst 


Student Volunteer Sertes, No. 9. 


iy 


CHRISTIAN MISSIONS 


SHES HIGHEST* USE: OF 
WEALTH 


President Merrill Edwards Gates, LL.D. 


OF AMHERST 


The substance of this paper was delivered as an 
address at the annual meeting of the A. B.C. F. M., 
at Pittsfield, Mass., October, 1891. ; 


CHRISTIAN MISSIONS 
AND THE 


HIGHEST USE OF WEALTH. 


The incarnation of the living God as 
the Redeemer of man has made it for- 
ever necessary that the man who would 
know God must see something of God 
in his fellow-men. In all ages the men 
whose hearts God has touched, whose 
eyes God has opened that they may see 
Him and make others see Him, have 
been men mightily moved in soul and 
heart toward their fellow-men. The 
nearer we come to God’s view of human 
life, the purer and deeper and mightier 
will be our love of human souls and our 
pity for wasted, sinful, and benighted 
human lives. 

LOVE OF GOD AND WORK FOR MEN. 

There is a Divine revelation of the 
very heart of God Himself in the de- 
scription Christ gives us of the scenes of 


4 


division at the judgment. Our Master 
takes as His own not those who self- 
ishly- cry, ‘‘Lord, Lord!’’ and boast 
familiarity with God’s power and 
achievements of their own in casting 
out devils; but the men who have shown 
‘the mind which was in Christ Jesus,’’ 
and under the constraining power of 
Christ’s love have served Him by serv- 
ing ‘‘in His name” their fellow-men for 
whom He died. It is by the faith that 
is in Christ Jesus that we stand; but the 
absolutely vital, the indissoluble connec- 
tion of faith with love and with works of 
love and helpfulness and mercy, is made 
startlingly clear in this revelation by 
Christ of the things which shall be made 
manifest at that day. It is only by liv- 
ing out a vital principle of life to its 
issues that we can come to know it 
thoroughly. True Christians are men 
and women who are bent upon reducing 
right theories of life to right living. 
Life-power and moral truth are the 
mightiest forces in the universe. In 
Christian character these two forces are 
combined. God is life and truth; god- 


~ 


2) 


likeness worked out in life is character; 
into sound character has entered the 
“omnipotence of a principle,” and the 
almightiness of God Himself is pledged 
to make character, which is vitalized 
truth, the mightiest power within the 
control of man. And since God is love, 
and God in Christ is the supreme reve- 
lation of that holy and infinitely attrac- 
tive love which spared not His own Son 
that He might be just and yet might 
love us out of our sins into lives of 
holiness, Christians can never learn 
large lessons of God’s love in Christ 
without sharing in Christ’s love for their 
fellow-men. 


THE TEST—OUR FEELING TOWARD MULTI- 
TUDES OF UNSHEPHERDED MEN. 


Always, then, for the individual Chris- 
tian, and for any body of Christians who 
are acting together, there is a supreme 
test in the question, How deep a con- 
cern do you feel for the welfare of the 
great body of your fellow-men? What 
are your feelings, what are your pur- 
poses, what is your attitude of soul to- 


6 


ward the benighted ones, our brothers 
and sisters, who are ignorant, debased, 
sin-burdened, and hopeless in the 
world? 

Sharp and clear is the contrast be- 
tween the spirit of the Pharisees and 
the spirit of Christ in this matter of 
caring for crowds of the common peo- 
ple. When their returning officers 
said, ‘‘Never man spake as this man 
speaks,” and when ‘‘the common people 
heard Him _ gladly,” the Pharisees 
waved aside the divine meaning of the 
message with that contemptuous phrase, 
the essence of selfish vanity and arro- 
gant pride, ‘‘This people that knoweth 
not the law is accursed.” But ‘the 
mind that was in Christ Jesus,” the mind 
that dwells in every true child of God in 
richer fulness as the Holy Spirit shows 
him the things of Christ, is revealed in 
the words, ‘‘But when He saw the mul- 
titude, He was moved with compassion 
upon them, because they fainted and 
were scattered abroad as sheep having 
no shepherd.’’ In those words speaks 
from the heart of God the loving voice 


7 


of the Good Shepherd; and ‘‘His sheep 
know His voice and follow Him.”’ 

This mind that was in Christ, this 
deep yearning love for lost men, has 
always marked the true Church. It 
began its growth among men with the 
growth of the early Church at Jerusalem, 
and it had to break its way through that 
intense spirit of exclusiveness which, 
with the Jewish Church, had been a cult 
for centuries. For generations God 
had walled in His chosen people, had 
separated them from the rest of the 
world, that their knowlege of Him and 
their realization of His presence might 
be intensified by exclusion. In the ful- 
ness of time, when the Word was made 
flesh, when the love of God was poured 
into the life of men through the life and 
the words of Christ, this spirit of love 
for all mankind burst the cerements of 
the old dispensation, and the Christian 
Church began its wondrous growth on 
earth. It came into life, it grew and 
prospered, under the teaching and 
guidance of the Third Person of the 
Trinity, the ever-living Holy Spirit, 


8 


whose office it is to take of the things of 
Christ and show them to His followers, 
who is with us here to-day guiding His 
Church. Peter first felt the power of 
this mission-spirit of love for all man- 
kind. Then the heavenly vision came 
to Paul, and flaming with the spirit “of 
Christ’s love he went through all the 
provinces, fiery-hearted with the spirit 
of missions. With the growth of the 
Church this spirit has increasingly pre- 
vailed, the walls of separation between 
nations have been broken down by it. 
It is to the growing spirit of Christ, 
not to the evolution of a perception of a 
subtly selfish interest for the individual 
to be attained by the promotion of the 
welfare of the whole—it is to the spirit 
of Christ and not to ‘‘enlightened self- 
interest,’? that we owe the deepening 
sense of the solidarity of the race which 
binds men together the world around. 
In the history of the Church it is the 
men whose hearts have received this 
spirit in the largest measure whose 
names illumine the annals of the Church 
and the pages of universal history. In 


9 


their hearts was condensed so much ofthe 
thrilling force of Christ’s love that heat 
passed into fiery rays of light, and they 
became beacons to men for all time. 
From Paul,. longing to visit Spain, 
yearning over the Romans, melted with 
love for the Galatians, holding all Greece 
and all Asia in his heart, down through 
the glorious roll of saints and martyrs 
and missionary heroes till we reach the 
names of the missionaries whom we have 
seen in the flesh, and whom we love, 
hearts and lives on fire with the love 
oflost and benighted men have been 
the evidence of the spirit of life in the 
Church of Christ. 

IN A LIVING CHURCH, ALWAYS A LOVE OF 

MISSIONS. 

There can be no living Church with- 
out a glowing love for missions. Christ 
has made this very clear to us. In the 
glimpse He gives us of the judgment, in 
His parting words as He ascended, ‘‘Go 
ye and make disciples of all nations,” 
and, ‘‘Lo, I am with you all the days, 
even unto the end of the world,” we find 
the very essence of His teaching, the 


Io 


flowering of His spirit of service. To 
seek and to save that which was lost,was 
the mission. that brought our Divine 
Redeemer from heaven to earth; and to 
seek and to save the lost is the Divine 
commission from the glorified Christ in 
heaven to each believer who looks up to 
a Divine Redeemer for direction in a 
life of grateful service. 

What has this to do with the question 
of money and its use? Let us ask our- 
selves this question thoughtfully. 


MEN AND MEANS. 


As members of the Church of Christ 
set to do Christ’s work in the world, 
assembled here in the interest of one of 
the most important agencies in that 
work of evangelizing the world, which 
is pre-eminently the one work given by 
Christ, to His people to do in His name, 
we are brought face to face with the 
question of ¢he means to carry out this 
important work. Here, as in every other 
important undertaking which is to in- 
fluence many lives, men and means are 
the essential requirements. Men never 


II 


were offered to a praying Church in such 
numbers as stand confronting us to-day, 
saying, ‘‘We are ready, send us.” 
Under the influence of the spirit of God, 
the immeasurable importance of bearing 
the glad tidings to the dark places of the 
earth has dawned upon young men and 
women in our land with avividness and a 
power never before seen or knownin the 
history of the Church. Do you who 
are past middle age remember the ‘‘mis- 
sionary concerts” of your youth, when 
prayers were regularly offered that God 
would ‘‘break down the walls” that shut 
Christians out of China and Japan? That 
prayer has been answered. The 
Emperor of China has issued a royal 
edict calling upon the governors of his 
provinces to protect the missionaries 
against misrepresentation and violence, 
and declaring that the object of Chris- 
tian teaching is tomake men better. We 
have been witnesses of this marvellous 
change. We haveseen Japan rise sud- 
denly to highest standards in civili- 
zation and in government—a nation born 
inaday. Japanese Christians are set- 


12 


ting the Christian world an example of 
unity and loving fellowship in work. 
The testimony of all observers is that 
never was a great nation in a more re- 
ceptive mood for Christian truth than 
is Japan to-day. In India there is a 
special call for laborers. Another gen- 
eration of educated men, broken loose 
from the old faith, will soon be anarchic 
in morals unless Christianity shall sup- 
ply the basis of morality in life. We need 
not raise any questions of a future hell; 
there will be hell let loose upon the 
earth unless Christian truth gets hold 
upon India, unless the love of Christ 
cherished in the heart shall more than 
make good the loss of restraints of the 
old order. In unharvested fields the 
grain, ripe and ready, falls to the earth 
in rich, decaying masses, ungarnered. 
Unless these years that are now upon us 
be used, the opportunity is forever lost. 
It is now or never, for India! 


“TIME-VALUE’’? AND ‘“‘PLACE-VALUE.”’ 


Political economists talk of a ‘‘time- 
value,” which belongs to a commodity 


13 
that is ready precisely when it is wanted, 
like seed corn in spring, and of a ‘‘place- 
value,’”’ which is the result of the pres- 
ence of an instrument or a commodity 
at the precise place where it is needed, 
and at precisely the time when it is 
needed. The time-utility of mission- 
ary effort just now is immense. Who 
can estimate the place-utility of Chris- 
tian effort now in Japan and in India? 
Of Africa I hardly dare to speak. 
Africa, no longer the totally ‘‘Dark Con- 
tinent,” first pierced through by the 
rays of love and light where Livingstone 
carried his well-read Bible that rayed 
out life for him and made his path a trail 
of love and light until that night when 
he knelt alone beside his cot under the 
great tree in the wilderness and, 
kneeling, met his God; Africa, now 
slowly rising to a place in the world’s 
history, but still as booty to be struggled 
for in a contest of diplomacy, if not of 
arms—to save and uplift Africa, what 
need of Christian giving, what a call for 
help from Christian America, who owes 
the heaviest debt to that continent 


14 
which is mother of the race, long fet- 
tered and beaten with many stripes, 
whose unrequited toil made ‘‘cotton 
king”’! 

We see these open doors. We hear 
these calls from perishing men. We see 
the ‘‘time-value” and the ‘‘place-value” 
of efforts now put forth for Christ. Loyal 
subjects of Christ our King, we see 
clearly the importance of these strategic 
points to be seized now for the advance- 
ment of His kingdom among men. The 
eld walls about the isolated nations, 
which our fathers and mothers prayed to 
have thrown down, lie flat before us. 
The opportunity is ample. The need 
is pressing, _The demand from the field 
is imperative. The loss of life, the loss 
of souls, is deadly. 


WHAT HINDERS THE WORK? 


In those monthly concerts, when the 
walls about China and Japan had fallen, 
the petitions began to take on this 
stereotyped form: ‘‘Lord, raise up men 
and women who shall be willing to go 
into these opening fields.” The sacri- 


15 
fice involved in foreign mission work has 
always been immense, but the fruit of it 
has been abundant and rich. Partings 
with kindred and friends, departures 
into strange lands—these have always 
been essential to the propagation of the 
truth since the time when God said to 
Abraham, the father of the faithful, 
“Get thee out of thy country and from 
thy kindred, and come into the land 
which I will show thee.” By such self- 
sacrificing obedience to God’s com- 
mands have new nations learned of that 
brotherhood of man which has no mean- 
ing, no power, save as all nations learn 
that they have a common Father, even 
God. Much of what is called the ‘‘spirit 
of the nineteenth century,’’—this awak- 
ening of the world to the conviction that 
all men are of one blood, and that prop- 
erty in man is impossible—is the mani- 
fest result of mission work done by 
strangers who, for Christ’s sake and at 
God’s call, have sojourned in strange 
lands among despised peoples preaching 
peace and brotherhood through Christ. 
But the cost of leaving home and friends 


16 


and native land, the sacrifice involved in 
expatriating one’s self and one’s chil- 
dren, has always been so serious a mat- 
ter to contemplate that those who love 
their own ease have always wondered 
when the call of God has been potent 
enough to carry His consecrated ser- 
vants as missionaries to foreign fields. 
The supply of men and women willing 
to go has never been equal to the need 
of the field, seldom to the means at the 
disposal of the missionary boards. It 
has been taken for granted by the 
Church for the last two generations, first, 
that the walls that shut in mighty na- 
tions could not be broken down short of 
centuries to come; and then, that labor- 
ers willing to go could not be found in 
sufficient numbers. 


FACE TO FACEK WITH ANSWERED PRAYERS. 


But what is ¢/me to our God when He 
wills to send His kingdom forward by a 
mighty unfolding into the growing sea- 
son, into the flowering time! A thou- 
sand years areas a day with Him. He 
laid the walls level. He opened the 


17 
way. His will and wisdom brought in 
theageof steam. Railroads and steam- 
ship lines girdle His giobe to make 
ready a highway for His messengers, 
‘speaking peace to the nations.” He 
sets a Stephenson and a Fulton,a Morse 
and a Bell and an Edison at His tasks 
when they knowit not. Corporations 
of selfish men do His work, as heed- 
less of the plan of God as are the stones 
which are framed into the mighty arch 
of the cathedral, or the liquid elements 
that are seized upon by the growing 
plant and drawn up into a place in the 
beauty of its unfolded blossom by a 
power utterly beyond their ken! Mis- 
sion fields are open. The world is the 
. field. All fences are down. A Chris- 
tian Church, the Church of America, 
stands to-day face to face with its an- 
swered prayers. It is as if a throng of 
men and women had been standing in 
the ante-room of the King’s chamber, 
half drearily telling each other in mo- 
notonous voices what they wished to 
ask for if the King would only give them 
audience, Suddenly the King steps in 


18 


among them and declares, ‘‘I know your 
wishes; you have them now!’’ And 
with stammering voices and uncertain 
gestures the would-be petitioners stand 
abashed in the presence of a royal Giver, 
whose readiness to give exceeds their 
readiness to receive! 
THE STUDENT VOLUNTEERS FOR MISSIONS. 

For a generation the Church has been 
praying for men and women who were 
ready togo, The Holy Spirit has tried 
the hearts and searched the spirits of 
young men and women at our higher in- 
stitutions of learning. No one who has 
been among them, asI have been, and has 
seen this searching work of the Lord, 
can fail to recognize it as God’s doing, 
and as altogether wonderful and like His 
mighty power and the gracious con- 
straining force of His own love, that to- 
day over six thousand young Christians 
of America are volunteers for Christian 
mission work. 

The years when students look out 
upon life from the mountain heights of 
youth are favorable toa clear vision of 
comparative values. While the wish is 


, 19 

eager to make one’s life count for the 
utmost possible in the service of God 
by serving one’s fellow-men, those 
whose eyes God touches that they may 
truly see, discern the truth that no other 
work compares in potent possibility for 
good with this light-bearing in dark 
places. Our ‘‘young men see visions;” 
and this is the fulfilment of God’s glori- 
ous promise of rich blessing for any na- 
tion. They see that the Holy Spirit 
deseribes the highest object of a lib- 
eral education, when He speaks of one 
who ‘‘has the tongue of the learned to 
speak a word in season to him that is 
weary.” And the Spirit of God has so 
moved upon the young people in the 
Church of God in this land, that as a 
class of Christians they say to-day to 
the Church of God, ‘‘We are ready to 
go; we are eager to try within this next 
generation to fulfil the glorious com- 
mand of Christ and ‘make disciples of 
all nations.’ ” 
THE ALMIGHTY BANKER CALLS IN HIS LOANS. 

Since the work is Christ’s work in- 
trusted to ys, since the would-be 


20 


workers are ready and call upon our 
mission boards to send them; since the 
great, the rapidly growing wealth of this 
Christian nation is in the hands of Chris- 
tian men and women of mature years; my 
brothers, what answer can we give for 
ourselves before the judgment throne of 
God, if this glorious work of preaching 
the Gospel of light to dying men is 
checked and dwarfed, and fails of its 
glorious possibility, because we who 
are God’s stewards hold fast to God’s 
money for our own selfish uses? There 
is a time when the Almighty Banker of 
the Universe callsin His loans! There 
is a time whenthe Master, about to 
return from far countries, Himseif makes 
rigid yet loving inquiry of every steward 
concerning the talents, be they one or 
ten, intrusted to his use. Are we so 
using the money God has given us as 
to give to Him ‘‘His own with interest”? 

But, some one will say, this is an un- 
natural view which you present. Chris- 
tians are to use their money as do other 
men, subject to the laws of political 
economy and in accordance with the 


21 


general spirit of the time in which they 
dwell and with the standards that pre- 
vail in the grades of society where 
their lot is cast. Let us look at the 
question for a moment. 

HIS PROPERTY IS A MAN’S “‘OBJECTIFIED 

WILY.”’ 

A man’s property has been said to be 
his‘‘objectified will.’’ Mere things, which 
apart from .man are impersonal and 
utterly outside of moral and jural con- 
siderations, enter into the domain of 
rights, of justice, of morality, through 
their relation to the will of their owner. 
The object into which you have intro- 
duced your will, which you have willed 
and worked to make your own, has be- 
come inasense a part of you. There 
is a true sense in which the man who 
touches your property touches you. 
Property that is truly owned and used 
becomes in a sense a part of the owner 
and user. His intelligence permeates 
it, his will directs itsuse. Since wealth 
is often labor stored up in portable form, 
it has init a man’s life. It partakes of 
his personality. A man’s wealth, 


22 


through his acting in it , becomes a per- 
sonal force in social life which may be 
used for the noblest ends or prostituted 
to the basest uses. 

No man can escape the fullest re- 
sponsibility for the use he makes of his 
wealth, which is potential power of ser- 
vice. Every man holds all his powers in 
trust; for the use he makes or fails to 
make of each power, he must answer at 
the judgment-seat of God. Our divine 
Teacher has warned us that in wealth 
there is a subtle and dangerous ten- 
dency which leads it to seek to escape 
this law of service. Wealth, which should 
be a useful servant, seeks to become a 
tyrannical master. Christ in His warn- 
ings to His followers personifies but 
one power in the universe as likely to 
become a dangerous rival for that throne 
in man’s heart and life which belongs 
to God Himself. The subtle power 
against which He thus warns us is 
Mammon, the love of money. Between 
the mad pursuit of gain and the service 
of the living God, He warns us that 
everyman must choose. ‘‘Ye cannot 


23 
serve God and Mammon.” The pro- 
perty that you have must be as fully 
and entirely subject to the law of the 
service of God in serving your fellow- 
men, aS must your powers of heart and 
will and hand and head. 
THE CONVERTED HEART INVOLVES THE CON- 
VERTED POCKET-BOOK. 

Talk of men as converted, as Chris- 
tian men, who consciously and deliber- 
ately allow their property to be used for 
debasing and ruining their fellow-men! 
Imagine that a man’s heart and will can 
be converted to the service of God, and 
his property remainin the service of the 
devil! ‘Tis an utter impossibility! 

The conversion that does not reach a 
man’s use of his property is no true 
conversion. ‘There is no truly Christian 
man who keeps an unconverted pocket- 
book or bank account. God’s universal 
law of unselfish service is as supreme in 
the domain of material possessions—in 
the realm of that wealth which extends 
a man’s power ‘‘to bring things to pass”’ 
—as it is in any other department of 
man’s possible efforts. The unvarying 


24 
law of God, which attaches an obliga- 
tion to every opportunity and places a 
duty over against every right, makes no 
exception of wealth with its vast powers 
of service. God has so ordered the 
social life of our race that no man can 
make the most of his powers of mind 
and heart and will until he employs 
those powers in the service of his fellow- 
men. This is an accepted law in the 
realm of mind and spirit. It is no less 
binding upon the power which material 
wealth places at a man’s disposal. No 
man has the slightest right to say of 
his wealth, “(It is mine, I may use it 
selfishly if I will.” No man has ar- 
rived at a true conception of the re- 
sponsibility that attaches to the posses- 
sion of property, until his relations 
through it to his fellow-men fill a larger 
place in his views of life than does his 
ability by his wealth to serve his own 
selfish ends. No man is free to make 
an option as to whether he and his pro- 
perty shall come under God’s law of 
service. He and his property are under 
that law, of necessity, as he is of neces- 


25 

sity a member of society and of the 
State, without his leave having been 
asked. In the use of his property, as of 
all his other powers, he owes steady 
allegiance to that law of service, by 
virtue of the solidarity of God’s universe 
of law; and though in managing his 
property he may disregard this obliga- 
tion, he can never escape it. 

Now, wealth must be used for service 
according to its own laws. Wealth is 
productive only as it is used as capital 
—that is, as wealth employed in the 
production of new wealth, of new values. 
Since wealth is “the usufruct of skill, 
intelligence, and morality,’ it places its 
owner under obligation steadily so to 
use it as to reproduce morality, intelli- 
gence and skill. 


RESTRICTED SERVICE, TO GAIN WEALTH. 


My brothers, Christian men who have 
put much of your life into money-win- 
ning, aS you remember how much of 
time and effort have been withheld by 
you from more definite Christian work 
that you might concentrate yourself upon 


26 


money winning, is there not an especial 
call upon you that you redeem (“buy 
back’) the time that was withheld from 
God’s work by you while you were mak- 
ing money? 

Take the case of a man who has won 
his wealth by years of concentrated 
effort. Often it is true that he has 
gained it by a constant withdrawal of 
his time and his strength from other oc- 
cupations in which a generous, public- 
spirited man would like to engage. ‘‘Fol- 
low this line of ‘study with me,’’ said a 
friend in his early manhood. ‘No, 
business demands all my time,” was the 
answer. ‘Take hold and help us in this 
effort at political reform in our city,’’ 
said his public-spirited neighbor. ‘‘1 
haven’t the time, business claims me.” 
‘Will you undertake part of the work 
of special visiting to be done by our 
church people this winter?” ‘Really, 
you must find some one else, my dear 
pastor, I am so pressed by business.” 
It was by such restrictions of effort, 
by such exclusions of everything that 
did not tend directly to the winning 


27 
of money, that he made his way to 
wealth. 


But clearly, God meant that man to 
cultivate his mind, to be a useful citizen 
and a Christian worker. In some way, 
then, the time and strength withdrawn 
from other duties and from public ser- 
vice should be given back to serving 
the public, to the enriching of the life 
of others. 


LET THE LIFE INVOLVED IN WEALTH-WINNING 
BE EVOLVED IN THE RIGHT USE 
OF WEALTH. 


The time owed to distinctively Chris- 
tian effort, to work for the good of his 
fellow-men, may be in part made good, 
if the wealth into which his efforts and 
time were coined is used nobly and 
wisely. And while no giving for Chris- 
tian work can take the place of personal 
interest in Christian activity, yet many 
men could do infinitely more by free and 
consecrated gifts of large sums of money 
than they now do by formal expres- 
sions of their sense of unworthiness and 
lack of effort in the past, unaccom- 


28 


panied even now by any large use of 
their wealth for Christ’s cause. 

‘‘Redeem the time” that was with- 
held from God’s service by you while 
you were making money. Redeem it, 
buy it back, by using your money con 
scientiously and generously for God’s 
work, 

If you have inherited wealth, let the 
time and labor that were :mvolved in the 
rolling up and the transmission of a 
fortune, be evolved again in days and 
years of active philanthropic and Chris- 
tian work, done by the Christian workers 


whom your money supports in mission 
fields. 


“PECUNIA ALTER SANGUIS.”’ 


For every one of us, a part of his life- 
effort is stored up in money—in his pos- 
sessions. It is the clear perception of 
this fact that gives significance to the old 
phrase, ‘‘pecunia alter sanguis.’’ In the 
money your life acquires is stored up 
the life-blood of your effort; not because 
gold is as precious as one’s life, but be- 
cause the power acquired by past effort, 


29 
stored up in money, enables you to set 
the efforts ot others in motion to carry 
out your purpose and your will. How 
shall this life-blood of your past effort 
be kept pure and noble? How will you 
use it? 

Wealth is concentrated power of ser- 
vice.» Whether our wealth be great or 
small, it is still concentrated power of 
service. Is the wealth that is in the 
hands of Christians also consecrated 
power of service? Upon this blood of 
your past life, which has in it a life-giv- 
ing power if used for noble ends, has 
there fallen the touch of consecration? 

Is it not an awful danger of our times, 
the greatest peril that threatens profess- 
edly Christian people, that though we 
are Christians, we so persistently ignore 
all true ends in the use of our money? 
Is it not too much our habit of thought 
to regard only those as people of wealth 
who have much more money than have 
we? When we read upon page after 
page of the New Testament, the most 
searching warnings as to the use of 
wealth, is it not our habit to pass them 


30 
on to the very wealthy, whose fortunes 
far exceed the means at our disposal? 
MAMMON MAY BE WORSHIPED BY THE POOR AS 
TRULY AS BY THE RICH. 

Yet the essential nature of wealth does 
not lie in its quantity, in the amount of 
money at a man’s disposal. The god 
Mammon may be worshiped with a 
man’s whole heart, though his business 
transactions be petty and his savings 
small. Some rich men give to good 
causes small contributions, with a hypo- 
critical allusion to ‘‘the widow’s mite;” 
but our Lord bestowed His regal bless- 
ing upon the widow’s mite zot because 
it was small, but Jdecause she gave her 
whole living to the Lord. And in the 
countless warnings addressed by Him 
who is the Truth to His followers, cau- 
tioning them as to the deceitfulness of 
riches, as to the difficulties that those 
who trust in riches will find in entering 
the Kingdom of Heaven, the word used 
is one that does not lay stress upon 
great wealth—is one that may be used 
of very small possessions. Theessential 
meaning of the word is usable values 


31 
embodied in matertal things. |The warn- 
ing is against trusting in material things 
for our happiness, our security, our 
power. Rather are we to trust in the 
living God, to use for the glory of God 
all the powers we have of body, soul 
and mind, every means by which we 
may bring things to pass in our life here. 
The warning is against the comfortable 
sense of safety that comes from ‘‘having 
means behind you,” large or small. 
Whatever possession is capable of 
standing between a man’s soul, anda 
vital living dependence upon God day 
by day, is to be suspected, dreaded, and 
used with fear and trembling as in the 
sight of a jealous God who has per- 
sonified this love of possessions as His 
' great rival in the hearts of men. 


“DECEITFULNESS.”’ 


The peculiarity of riches, great or 
small, lies in their deceitfulness. They 
that trust in possessions cannot enter 
into the kingdom, even in their concep- 
tion of what that kingdom is, and of 
what are its powers. And the awful 


32 
danger in dealing with riches is, that the 
material advantages they secure are so 
obvious, so universally recognized, that 
most men never get beyond these 
advantages in thought, desire, or fear. 
How lightly and apologetically we 
Christians are accustomed to deal with 
the awful emphasis which our Master 
has laid upon the perpetual, essential 
danger that lies in the use of wealth! 
Our Lord has spoken of this danger 
again and again, in words that stand 
out luminous with such lurid light as 
burns in his warnings against the un- 
pardonable sin. Yet too often we hear 
these warnings tossed aside with a half 
smile, even by preachers of the Gospel 
who are accustomed to preach to the 
rich, as though they would say, ‘Of 
course, Christ said this, but what He 
meant was so essentially different from 
this that it need not for a moment make 
you gentlemen with large bank accounts 
uncomfortable, especially if you respond 
kindly to the special appeal I make this 
morning, and drop into the box a con- 
tribution a little larger than usual.’’ Let 


a3 


us, who believe in the living Word of 
the living God, take time to read to- 
gether a few of the many utterances in 
God’s Word which bear directly upon 
this point. Who can doubt that the 
iteration and reiteration of these warn- 
ings is, for us and for all Christians, 
profoundly significant? 


THE TESTIMONY OF THE WORD OF GOD. 


‘‘The rich man is wise in his own con- 
ceit” (Prov. 28:11). ‘‘Thou fool! this 
night thy soul shall be required of thee. 
So is he that layeth up treasure for him- 
self and is not rich toward God’’ (Luke 
12:20). ‘The deceitfulnes of riches 
chokes the word’’ (Matt. 13: 22). 
“But they that will (to) be rich fall 
into a temptation and a_ snare, and 
into many foolish and hurtful lusts, 
which drown men in destruction and 
perdition’’ (1 Tim. 6:9). ‘‘For the love 
of money is a root of all kinds of evil: 
which some reaching after, have been 
led astray from the faith, and have 
pierced themselves through with 
many sorrows’’ (1 Tim. 6:10). ‘‘Let 


34 


not the rich man glory in his riches.” 
‘Verily I say unto you, that a rich man 
shall hardly” (the Greek is [duskolos] 
dvoxdhws, meaning literally that his diet 
and his digestion are such as to put his 
life entirely out of harmony with the 
heavenly life; it ‘‘goes against his 
_ stomach;’’ before he can enter in, he 
must be fed upon other food!)—‘‘shall 
hardly enter into the kingdom of heav- 
en” (Matt. 19:23). ‘How hardly shall 
they that have riches’’ (the Greek is 
[chremata] ypjuata, not necessarily great 
riches, but possessions enough to trust in) 
“enter into the kingdom of God’ 
(Luke 18:24). ‘‘Charge them that are 
rich in this world that they be not high- 
minded, nor trust in the uncertainty of 
riches, but in the living God; that they 
do good, that they be rich in good 
works, ready to distribute, willing to 
communicate —that they may lay hold on 
eternal life” (1 Tim. 6:17,18). *‘Go to, 
now, ye rich, weep and howl for your 
miseries that are coming upon you. 
Your riches are corrupted; your gold and 
your silver are rusted, and their rust 


35 


shall be for a testimony against you” 
(James 5:1-3). It is the rust, not the 
gold, that is the witness against them. 
Their means are not used for Christ, and 
the selfish rust on them ‘shall eat your 
flesh as it were fire.” <‘‘There is a 
grievous evil which I have seen under 
the sun—namely, riches kept by the 
owners thereof to their hurt; and those 
riches perish by evil adventure” (Eccl. 
VER OE 

Can there be any question that these 
clear declarations of God cut sharply 
across the tacit assumptions of many of 
the Christian congregations of our times? 


CHRIST TEACHES CHRISTIANS TO USK WEALTH, 
BUT NOT TO ‘“‘TRUST’’ IT. 


Yet this subtly dangerous power of 
wealth is entrusted to Christians. The 
parables and teachings of our Lord, 
time after time, hold up the property 
relation as the basis of a lesson in 
Christian living. The great majority of 
His parables deal with this relation in 
one form or another. Nothing can be 
clearer than that He holds every Chris- 


36 


tian responsible for the right use of all 
his possessions, however small, however 
large, they may be. For the right use 
of the ten talents and the two talents, 
there is the same commendation, the 
same relative reward; while the awful 
stress of contrast is laid upon him who 
had du¢ one talent because he declined 
to use that one for his master. There is 
no one of us here present, then, who 
can feel that the warnings and respon- 
sibilities that attend the possession of 
wealth for a Christian do not concern 
himself. For the right use of all his 
powers of service, God holds each one 
of us responsible; and certainly the in- 
come that each one of us receives, the 
property that each one of us possesses, 
has in it latent power of service for the 
promotion of the Master’s kingdom. 

Now the divine law of political 
economy applies to this whole matter. 
Dangerous as is the use of wealth, God 
calls upon Christians to useall they have 
of it, be it little or much, in His service 
and for His glory. We sing in moments 
of devotion, 


37 


“All that I have I owe to Thee, 
I hold it for the Giver.’’ 


The proportion which each man of us is 
free to spend upon his own personaj 
gratification, upon the personal pleas- 
ures of his family, upon the embellish- 
ments of his home, we cannot determine 
for each other; but every one of us is 
bound conscientiously to determine it 
before God, and under the searching 
vision of the Spirit of all Truth, whom 
no detail and no selfish motive can 
escape. The Holy Spirit in the heart 
of Christians can and does make ‘‘sump- 
tuary laws” for us. 
TO HELP MEN TO HELP THEMSELVES. 

When we become convinced that there 
is in our hands as stewards money to be 
used for our absent Lord—for our Lord 
in bodily presence withdrawn, in spirit 
dwelling in us—then how gloriously 
does the scope of this mission work open 
out before us as we look at the money 
in ourhands! Wealth must be used for 
unselfish ends, or it cannot be used as 
the Lord wills. To help others, we 
must help them to help themselves 
The greatest work which Christian 


38 


wealth can do in the world is to bring 
men one by one under the sway of that 
one Supreme Personality,the Lord Jesus 
Christ! 

HELP THEM TO CHRIST. 

The only hope for men is in a close 
personal relation with a _ personal 
Saviour. Not in masses will men be 
lifted out of vice and sin. Society will 
be purified, institutions will be made 
better and kept better, only as men are 
drawn one by one to Him ‘Who has 
been lifted up.” The great social dis. 
content of our time, whose hoarse warn- 
ing voice comes to our ear from every 
continent on the globe, finds its cause in 
the lack of a true center for each man’s 
life in Christ. The pitiable, blind yearn- 
ings of socialism must touch the hearts 
of true Christians, because they are the 
gropings of men after that true brother- 
hood which men find only when they 
see the Fatherhood of God. Christ is 
the ‘Desire of the Nations,” though 
they know Him not. The truest, wisest 
use of wealth is in promoting efforts to 
bring the Gospel of Christ home to the 


39 

hearts of the people, and to bring the 
people home to Christ. ‘‘They that 
trust in their wealth and boast them- 
selves in the multitude of their riches, 
none of them can by any means redeem 
his brother, or give to God a ransom for 
him.’’ But the power of the Holy Spirit 
can transmute these money gifts, which 
we here and now before God pledge 
-ourselves to make for the promotion of 
His kingdom, into Christian influences 
which will win souls for Christ. Oh, 
what a glorious thought, that dead and 
wasted years, which have been coined 
into money, if that money be laid at the 
feet of Christ, may be made to live over 
again, His spirit touching the dead 
past and quickening it into living ser- 
vice, as this money shall send to the 
dark places of the earth souls fired with 
the wish to preach Christ! 

‘Defer not charities till death,’’ says 
Bacon, ‘‘for certainly, if a man weigh it 
rightly, he that doth so is rather liberal 
of another man’s than of his own.’’ Be 
your wealth great or small, use it for 
Christ while you can yourself direct its 


40 

use, while you can yourself see and 
enjoy the mighty moral and spiritual 
values which are produced from the 
right use of wealth. Where is the man 
or the woman of large wealth who will 
set the world a Christian example of 
that free, cheerful, joyous giving which 
God loves—‘‘God loveth a cheerful giv- 
er’—by taking a whole mission station 
to support from his abundant means, as 
a rich man keeps a yacht “for his own 
pleasure’? Who will thus prayerfully 
“redeem” large sections of his great 
wealth, of his coined time, by prayer- 
fully using it for these noble ends? 

We look for the speedy appearing of 
such great benefactions, as the responsi- 
bility of wealth comes to be more clearly 
felt. Meanwhile, let us see to it that by 
loving and free giving until we feed tt in 
the sweet deprivations that we are willing 
to meet for Christ’s sake,we each one ofus 
show to the world something of that spirit 
that brings a blessing from the Lord, 
Who still “sits over against the treasury.” 


Stadent \/ ofanteer Series... 


1. History of the Student Volunteer Movement 
for Foreign Missions. John R. Mott. 
Price, ten cents. 


2. Shall | Go? Thoughts for girls. Miss 
Grace E. Wilder. Price, five cents. 


8. Prayer and Missions. Robert E. Speer. 
Price, five cents. 


4, The Volunteer Band. Robert E. Speer. 
Price, five cents. 


5. The Self-Perpetuation of the Volunteer Band. 
J. Campbell White. Price, five cents. 


6. Ten Lessons on the Bible and Missions. 
J. Campbell White. Price, five cents. 


The Volunteer Band Meeting, Not yet issued. 


8. The Bibie and Missions. Robert P. Wilder. 
Price, five cents. 


9. Christian Missions and the Highest Use of 
Wealth, President Merrill E. Gates,LL.D., 
of Amherst. Price, five cents. 


In quantities, No. ris sold at 80 cents per 
dozen, or $6.00 per hundred; numbers 2 to 9, 
40 cents per dozen, or $3.00 per hundred. Sam- 
ple sets, consisting of one copy of each number, 
so far as issued, may be had at 30 cents per set. 


Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions 
80 INSTITUTE PLACE, CHICAGO, ILL. 


